Five years on from Kevin Rudd's historic apology to the Stolen Generations on February 13, 2008, emotions still run strongly through the Indigenous people it was directed towards.
And in some cases, relief or joy at the time of the apology have more recently been replaced by frustration or anger at the lack of progress in relation to compensation for victims of the policy.
"To the Stolen Generations I say the following. .. As Prime Minister of Australia I am sorry. On behalf of the Government of Australia I am sorry. On behalf of the Parliament of Australia, I am sorry. We offer this apology to the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sisters, the families and the communities whose lives were ripped apart by the actions of successive governments under successive parliaments."
The forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families began as early as the mid-1800s and continued well into the second half of the 1900s.
These removals resulted from official laws and policies aimed at assimilating the Indigenous population into the wider community.
An Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families was conducted by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in 1997.
It estimated two in 10 children were forcibly removed from their families and communities in the years 1910 to 1970.
"I was very, very distressed. I'd never been in the back of a truck before. I didn't know what was happening to me. We were told that we were going shopping in Alice Springs, but the shopping turned into forever, didn't it?"
Zita Wallace was eight years old when in 1947 she was taken from her family at Arltunga east of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.
She was one of five girls between the ages of two and 11 taken from the same place at the same time.
Ms Wallace says they were first taken to Alice Springs and then transported more than 1,500 kilometres to a mission on the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin.
"When we went to the islands all traces of our family had been hidden away or destroyed by the missionaries and we weren't allowed to contact anybody and when I approached one of the nuns about my family, how do I contact my family because I started asking questions about family, I was told we were a group of children, half cast children that nobody wanted and that we didn't have families. So we were discouraged from finding families."
Jackie Baxter is manager of the Central Australian Stolen Generations and Families Aboriginal Corporation.
She says Kevin Rudd's apology was welcome, but little has happened since to improve the lives of people who were removed from their families.
"We thank Kevin Rudd for the apology five years ago, but since then we've been seeking compensation and we've been fighting for it very, very adamantly. On the other side of it we're still looking to address the other 47 recommendations from the Bringing Them Home report because only seven have been fulfilled yet."
The Bringing Them Home report resulted from the national Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families in April 1997.
It found that individuals were permanently scarred by their removal as children, and the abuse they experienced at the hands of the authorities, with the effects even felt by their children and grandchildren.
Jackie Baxter, from the Central Australian Stolen Generations and Families Aboriginal Corporation, says Northern Territory groups are still struggling to win compensation.
"We come under the federal system and we're getting clouded and mixed up with the states. A lot of the state governments have already given compensation for Stolen Generations people and we need to get it direct from the federal government and at the moment our government is saying we have to wait until this inquiry into child sex abuse. Well, we don't have to wait because these are two completely different matters."
Now 73 years old, Zita Wallace found her mother in her late 40s or early 50s, decades after being taken away, and the reunion was difficult.
"My mother didn't want to know me. I was directed to her through family, through her older brother and younger sister, Agnes Abbott, who is still with us today and my mother, she said I was a spirit child because in our Arrernte culture, Eastern Arrernte culture, all Eastern Arrernte culture, Eastern, Western and Central, when a child's gone like that she just believed I was dead so I was a spirit child and she didn't acknowledge me at first."
Ms Wallace says the Stolen Generations and their families shouldn't still be fighting for compensation 16 years after the Bringing Them Home report, five years after the apology and 65 years after she was removed from her family.
"What makes me really angry is I don't begrudge anybody coming to Australia and trying to find a better life, but when you ignore the very people who were in this land long before the white people came around and who'd suffered so much injustice over the years. The white people taking our land to start with and then turning around and taking the children away and without a blink of an eye. So yes, that still hurts."
"We apologise, especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander children from their families and their country. For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind we say sorry."
